Saturday, March 01, 2014

Canadian Screen Awards / Juno Awards

Canada Gets Set To Roll Out Red Carpets For The Junos And The "Screenies"

By Eric Kohanik

Down in Hollywood, the Oscars will get
the usual lion's share of attention when they hit the tube on March
2. North of the border, though, the lights are shining on two
Canadian spectacles striving to stake out their own claims on the
airwaves.

The 2014 Canadian Screen Awards
return to CBC on March 9. Nestled inside Toronto's Sony
Centre for the Performing Arts, the awards are still in their
relative infancy, this being only their second foray into the densely
populated arena of televised award shows.

Already nicknamed the “Screenies”
around Canadian industry circles, the Canadian Screen Awards were
born last year, after the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television
merged its existing prizes for Canadian movies (the Genie Awards,
launched in 1980) with the accolades handed out for English-language
Canadian television (the Gemini Awards, launched in 1986). The merger
was accentuated by the launch of Canadian Screen Week, an annual
celebration leading up to the award show.

Veteran actor/comedian Martin Short is
back to host the CSAs again this year, thanks in part to his
energy-filled turn at the helm of last year's inaugural broadcast.

The 2014 Juno Awards
are set to grab their own chunk of the Canadian TV spotlight. This
year's awards return to CTV on March 30. This time
around, the setting is Winnipeg.

Juno Week celebrations will include
another Juno Cup celebrity-hockey game, a two-day JunoFest music
showcase and several other attractions. Capping off the week, of
course, is the award ceremony at Winnipeg's MTS Centre.

In addition to saluting the year's top
Canadian music achievements, the show will pay tribute to this year's
Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductees: Blair Thornton, Fred Turner,
Randy Bachman and Robin Bachman, better known for many years as
Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

While the Junos and the “Screenies”
likely won't come close to the glitz and worldwide attention of
Hollywood's biggest night of the year, that doesn't matter. Canadian
viewers can expect both award shows to pack a unique punch of their
own.